


Statement 0181508: Extinction Events

by Shade_OKiller



Category: Matthew Swift Series - Kate Griffin, The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Actually takes place just after 151, Gen, Pre-Episode: e160 The Eye Opens (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), The Extinction (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, The Eye (The Magnus Archives) - Freeform, You don't have to know Matthew Swift canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24405460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shade_OKiller/pseuds/Shade_OKiller
Summary: Statement of Mister Pinner, known as The Death of Cities, regarding The Terrible Change That Is To Come
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Statement 0181508: Extinction Events

The Magnus institute was an old building. Not a _very_ old building, only around since the 1800's, there were much older things in London, but old enough. Mr Pinner, freshly pressed into a pinstripe suit, paused outside the door. The grey London rain was not enough to push him in just yet. He could feel the weight of the Eye here, slicing him into parts to categorise. Perhaps he could bring the building down. London had been tacky in the last ten years. After that dang hat and that dang mayor. 

As he considered it the focus of that gaze sharpened, the Watcher unhappy with the direction of his thoughts. But he wasn't there for that. As much fun as it would be to pull the foundations out from under the Eye. Give it something to really worry about. 

"I'd think you'd be happy about me paying your project a visit,” Mr Pinner smiled a bland businessman’s smile and entered the building. The water that ran off him and pooled on the lobby floor had the iridescent sheen of oil slick. 

He was more watched here, but that was the Eye’s problem, wasn't it? Curiosity won out in the end. It always wanted to see what happened next. 

The receptionist, a lovely woman who saw right through him, pointed him down towards the archive. Down there had a different sort of weight, of unkind secrets and the terrible knowledge that dragged you in. The scattered echoes of other fears, and the lonely mist in the corners, just added to it really. A collection of the horrid of the world, and now him. 

The main room was very lived in for an office. Really had the feeling of a city under siege, when you'd been around your neighbors too long and things were about to change. Mr Pinner had, in other forms, spent some time in those cities. Watching the slaughter at work, or corruption, or a half dozen other fears. Still, those cities made an effort at keeping the center safe. No one stopped him on the way to the Archivist, no one was there too. 

Of course he knocked, it was only polite. 

The man who opened the door resembled, far too much for comfort, that mayor. The same look of no sleep and no time to recover from a beating. Perhaps this time things would go smoother, given that it wasn't Mr Pinner who had provided the beating. 

"Good morning," Mr Pinner smiled but did not press on through the door, "I presume I'm speaking with the Archivist?"

  
  


" Who- What do you want?" It might as well have been a confirmation, what with the way the man stared. More than evaluative, it categorised. Pinned down Mr Pinner to see what would make him squirm. 

"To see the skyscrapers shatter and the bridges fall down. But more immediately, I want to make a statement," Mr Pinner answered with his best smile. 

"You're only, you just came here to make a statement?" The Archivist, and with all those terrible marks on him who else could he be, asked. 

"I don't think there's anything _just_ about a statement here, is there?" Mr Pinner asked. Smiled the bland smile of a property developer about to destroy a neighbourhood.

"But you're here to give a statement? Not to, to stab me or kidnap me, or, or hurt the other staff?" 

"Not used to polite visitors are you?" Mr Pinner asked with a laugh. The Archivist was still bristling. "No, I have no active intentions against anyone in this building, or tied to it, aside from the knowledge of how their own fears could serve my patron. Satisfied?"

"I,” the man sighed so hard he swayed with it, but when he looked back at Mr Pinner his eyes were _hungry_. “Come in.”

And Mr Pinner did. The office felt hemmed in. A whiff of dried blood in the air, and a lot of _person_ smell. It was always the smells that intrigued Mr Pinner, given that he had none of his own. The floor scratched and the walls chipped. The desk covered in paper and tape recorders and a jar of ash, the organised chaos of someone who always knew what he was looking for.

There was one chair across from the desk that wasn’t covered in paper, and that is where the Archivist directed him. 

“You definitely want to make a statement?” The Archivist’s voice rose just enough to be called a question. His eyes were still hungry. Mr Pinner knew, even if he had changed his mind, he would be making a statement today. 

"Oh I think you'll find this quite worth your time."

“Ah, alright then,” without the Archivist moving a tape recorder clicked on and the room filled with static. “statement of-”

“Mr Pinner, known as The Death of Cities, regarding The Terrible Change That Is To Come.”

“...Right. Statement recorded direct from subject by Jonathan Sims, the Archivist. Statement begins.” 

“When the atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, there was a house right in the middle of the blast, at its very heart, untouched while the rest of the city was levelled. When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, there was a man who walked through the flooded streets and laughed and the water could not buffet him, or when they firebombed Dresden there was one person untouched by the flames, or when the child tripped running into Bethnal Green station during the Blitz, that there was someone who knocked her down and climbed over the bodies piled up in the stairway. Myths. That’s all. Rumours and myths. Stories really, because there is something terribly reassuring about there being someone who knew it was coming. That there was just one person who made it happen.

  
“I am The Death Of Cities, I am ruined infrastructure and forgotten legacy, the empty place on the map. But when my work is done? When the changes have been total and complete? I will be consumed just as every city I feed on has been. And there will be a world without me, too.

“Or perhaps that terrible change will come for me, and I will become The Birth of Nations. Perish the thought,” Mr Pinner shuddered, only half for effect. 

“Your searching has been noticed. The statements of those who brushed up against the Future Without Them were enough to call me back here. However improperly.”

“What statements?” The Archivist asked and the question gripped what Mr Pinnter had in place of a brain and pulled.

“Those of my Patron, not many, hardly a handful. But they have been read. You didn’t know? Oh, oh my. I know I haven't made it a habit to check in with your temple of terrible knowledge but that doesn't mean you weren't watching! I almost pulled London down around your ears in 2010 and you don't remember?”

“I’m, uh, sorry I missed it?” The Archivist offered, looking as much like an awkward man as possible with those eyes peeling back the layers of forgotten trash that made up Mr Pinner.

“No, no it’s fine. Better, really.” Mr Pinner rolled what were not eyes and brushed nothing off his suit. He felt shuffled. “Never mind then, a story for another time. Suffice to say, someone here has been digging into the past, and since your institute has spent the last 200 years pretending we don’t exist I thought maybe it was worth having a look. 

“Still, I was not called here in the usual fashion. I am here to feed my god as you are here to feed yours. I’m going to tell you what is to come. The terrible change that you cannot avoid. Ready?

“Within the year, the world will end. Again.

“The fears are hungry in a way that you who was once human cannot comprehend. It is an endless hunger that will not stop, cannot be satiated or satisfied. There is no great plan, nothing that we, limited in our comprension to the roles we have been assigned, can understand. There is just fear and hunger. And the door.

“It’s not a door of course, it’s a terrible change. Like the Oxygen Holocoust, or the Chicxulub impactor. What comes after will not recognise the ruins of what was. But this time the coming change will be that of the Fears. And they will rule and feed on those that fall into their grasp.

“But remember, the fears are hungry. They are so hungry and they will never be full and they will never stop. And there’s only two ways that can go.

“Because there is one fear that is, not hungrier than the others, but more inevitable. The End, with it’s crawling routes of finality, comes for us all. And when all those who fear their own moment of ending have reached that point, have slumped over cold and unmoving, those routes will spread. Slip into the realms of other fears and take back that one, trembling, fear at the heart of all things that realized they were alive. And it will do this until there is nothing left, no scrap of fear for any of them. And those Corpse Routes will reach out onto those fears, and there will be nothing left as Extinction turns out the lights as it goes.

“Or, the door opens, and the change is great and terrible. Nothing recognisable except in how unrecognisable it is. The fears feast and The End draws ever closer. And another change comes. You think of Extinction as the end of the line, as if evolution were anything more than a series of extinctions.

“Consider, Archivist, the terrible change that was The Oxygen Holocaust. Without it, this conversation would not be happening. All those anaerobic organisms poisoned in one fluke of evolution, but the aerobic got to just keep going. The trick is they’re unrecognisable. Here’s the secret, Archivist, the change is only terrible for those who do not survive. Oxygen Holocaust, or Oxygen Revolution? Either way a bigger change than the extinction of the dinosaurs and even now you think it couldn’t have been that bad. You’re here, after all.

“But you’re a survivor Archivist, it takes one to know one. The Terrible Change is coming, there are a few people who have worked very hard to make sure of that. And you’re at the heart of it, here in this temple of stolen fear. I could put it off, I suppose. Kill you now and delay the event by a decade or so. But that wouldn’t really change anything. And it’s not in my nature to make something static.

“Instead, I’ll leave you with something. I dare say you’re used to it by now. Because this is the other option, rather than that slow creep of the End, this is Extinction. And this is the big red button. Always a possibility, always there. Here’s my promise, Archivist Jonathan Sims:

“You choose the perspective.”

Mr Pinner stat back, smiling gently at the big red button that had, just a moment ago, been the record button on a tape recorder. The Archivist looked better, the result of a good meal. And he didn’t look happy about it.

“I think you should go,” The Archivist dragged a hand down his face and gestured at the button, “I’d say take this with you, but-”

“It’s a part of you now, yes,” Mr Pinner stood from the seat and dusted himself off, even as the Archivist pinned him under that gaze. “Funny how these things keep happening, isn’t it?”

**Author's Note:**

> I refuse to believe that the Extinction is a new fear and I've been reading the Matthew Swift books again. The first paragraph of Mr Pinner's statement is taken almost entirely from The Midnight Mayor.


End file.
